US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hoping to visit China ‘in the near future’, close adviser says
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is hoping to visit China “in the near future”, as Washington looks to “depressurise” its relationship with Beijing, according to one of his top advisers.
The superpower relationship has sunk to its lowest point in decades in recent months. Face-to-face diplomacy was frozen after Blinken cancelled a trip to China in February, following a row over an alleged Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States.
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The broad contours of a visit were discussed between China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Vienna this week, State Department counsellor Derek Chollet told the South China Morning Post in an interview in Stockholm on Saturday morning.
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“We would very much like to get back to where we were in the planning in February, prior to the surveillance balloon flying over the United States, where Secretary Blinken would go to Beijing on behalf of the president to pick up where the two presidents left off in their meeting in Bali late last year,” Chollet said.
“They talked about what we’re hoping to get out of such a visit and the structure of dialogue we’d like to have with the PRC [People’s Republic of China], particularly in the service of figuring out ways we could depressurise the situation.”
He also said that while the US has “been willing to have face-to-face contacts”, China was “reluctant to do so”.
On Monday, before the Sullivan-Wang meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said that “the relationship between the two countries has once again hit the cold ice”.
Chollet, who advises Blinken on key areas of foreign policy, is attending the European Union’s Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum in Sweden.
Saturday’s event comes a day after the EU discussed its own China policy, and debated a paper orchestrated by its foreign policy chief that urged continued engagement with Beijing, even as it raised grave concerns about direction of travel in the world’s second largest economy.
The paper also flagged the mounting risks to Europe emanating from the intense US-China rivalry.
“Coordination with the United States will remain essential,” it read. “However, the EU should not subscribe to an idea of a zero-sum game whereby there can only be one winner, in a binary contest between the US and China.”
Chollet brushed off any concerns about transatlantic alignment on China issues, saying the US and EU had “never been more closely aligned when it comes to our perspective on the multiplicity of challenges posed by China’s rise and Chinese behaviour in the international system”.
“I think there is a shared view that we are dealing with a PRC that is more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad – there’s greater acknowledgement on it within the transatlantic community,” Chollet said.
“It seems to me that if I think back over the last dozen years or so, the conversation is just in a wholly different place.”
Chollet pointed to “mutual vulnerabilities” around supply chains and the transfer of key technologies. In recent weeks, top US officials such as Sullivan and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have adopted the European term “de-risking” when talking about relations with China – but insisted they were not interested in decoupling.
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“This is a common project I think that we have now. The details are going to be very difficult and challenging for all of us, as we think about ways we’re going to de-risk, but I think there’s no question that we need to be doing this together,” he said.
In Stockholm, Chollet will meet Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who will also be addressing ministers from around the Indo-Pacific.
The meeting comes ahead of visits to Kyiv and Moscow starting on Monday by China’s special envoy for Eurasia Li Hui, the man charged by Chinese President Xi Jinping with helping to broker peace in Ukraine.
Fifteen months into the Russian invasion, Chollet said it is “a good thing” China is “involved in the sense of talking to the Ukrainians”. However he has “modest expectations” of China bringing peace to Ukraine.
“It was positive that President Xi and President [Volodymyr] Zelensky had an opportunity to talk. We’ll see how this visit goes, I have modest expectations that there will be success just given that there’s very little evidence that I have seen … that Vladimir Putin is interested in anything other than his maximalist objectives,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chollet said the US was “open to” Canada joining the Aukus defence pact launched in 2021 by Australia, Britain, and the US. However he said that there was “nothing imminent at all” on that front, and that the members were focused on getting it up and running before they expand it.
Canada is reportedly “highly interested” in joining the alliance, designed to boost the trio’s presence in the Indo Pacific region and supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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